Talk Grows That Trump Will Fire Dan Coats

Some close to the White House believe that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats may soon be ousted as President Trump’s top intelligence official, a move that would draw ire from Capitol Hill and likely raise new concerns about the administration’s national security apparatus.

The latest speculation around Coats’s potential dismissal comes just weeks after the director of national intelligence (DNI) testified in a high-profile congressional hearing that North Korea is “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons” amid talks between Trump and the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

Longtime Trump confidant Christopher Ruddy this week raised the possibility the president could remove Coats from his post, asserting in a CNN interview that there is “general disappointment” with him at the White House, and that he overstepped his bounds by trying to “make policy and not inform policy.”

A former Trump administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Hill, “There is a growing sense in the administration that Coats’s days are numbered.”